Reader Response : I deeply appreciated what Jack Van Ens had to say about Solzhenitsyn, particularly in parallel with the life and witness of Jeremiah. How we need the reminder in these days that despair will not have the last word for those who put their hope in God. And this is where Mr. Van Ens lost me when he injected Sen. Obama into the narrative. While it may be the case that Obama sounds in many hearts the trumpet call of a new time, it is decidedly not a time to be confused with the new age of the Kingdom (about which both Jeremiah and Solzhenitsyn were speaking). When a politician at the height of his rhetorical trumpeting can say, "We are the ones we've been waiting for!", the audacity of hope seems to melt into mere audacity, and the remnants of hope scurry for some stable foundation upon which to survive present maelstroms of life. It is not enough to have hope; hoping in hope is as empty as hoping in human nature to rescue us from this fallen world we have shaped and sustained all too willingly. I wonder how Mr. Solzhenitsyn would view Mr. Obama's rhetoric and policies (along with those of Mr. McCain). I rather think on the basis of his own words quoted by Mr. Van Ens -- Our diabolical cockiness has become "the master of this world … who bears no evil within himself. So all the defects of life are attributed to wrong social systems" -- that he would lump most all our present politicians into the camp of those who perpetuate a view of life that has sold out God for the fool's gold of human achievement. Audacity produced by such groundless hope degenerates into impudence, the very spirit of our age against which Solzhenitsyn hurled his jeremiads.

Response By : Mateen Elass - Edmond , OK - September 24, 2008